The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has filed a petition with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block Pandora from running a terrestrial radio station, claiming that to allow the streaming music service to do so would not serve the public interest.
Pandora acquired the radio station …

COMMENTS

"The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has filed a petition with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block Pandora from running a terrestrial radio station, claiming that to allow the streaming music service to do so would not serve the public interest."

They must consider themselves the public then. It serves the public just fine, it just doesn't serve them.

RE: ASCAP seeks to block Pandora...

"The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) has filed a petition with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block Pandora from running a terrestrial radio station, claiming that to allow the streaming music service to do so would not serve the public interestcut into the available pool of money for executive bonuses"

The government represents the people

People vote, politicians get elected and then form a government. If you want them to represent an issue for you, then tell them or vote for someone who believes what you do. Or stand for election and if the rest of the public agree with you then it'll happen.

THEY WORK FOR YOU, our democracy has snags and problems absolutely, but it does seem less crappy than the options, people all over the world are desperate enough to fight and dream of having the same level of influence over their countries leaders as you have. The government of an elected democracy do represent the majority of the people.

Let me get this straight...

Pandora: "Fine, I'll just buy a radio station and then pay you the same as XYZ"

ASCAP: "NO FAIR - WAAAAAAAHHHHhhhhh...."

I am not a user of Pandora, but it seems to me than ASCAP was trying to penalise Pandora and got snarky when Pandora turned the table on them. Personally, I think Pandora should be allowed to get them same deal as the other "radio-station" broadcaster now that it fits ASCAP's bullshit criteria.

Re: Let me get this straight...

Re: Let me get this straight...

Why shouldn't streaming services pay more?

The service is of higher value to customers, so why do they expect to pay less for the input materials?

A single song played on a radio station has a limited geographical reach and uncertain audience - not everyone who can receive it does receive it, and there's no way to know. That uncertainty is why radio stations get discounted rates. But in a streaming service, you know exactly how many people could hear the song, and the nature of Pandora means that the people who did hear it are more likely to have wanted to - that's a higher value to the customer, and it reduces the chance of that customer buying the song if they can hear it as often as they want on the stream.

Let's turn around one of the standard arguments on this subject for a moment:

If Pandora aren't able to make money in the reality that's in place, they should look at other streams of income: Promotions, placement, advertising. After all, it's what musicians have been told to do in response to diminishing royalties. Why doesn't it apply to businesses, too?

It'd be nice if the usual suspects looked past "The Man" being involved, and examined the situation a bit more rationally. The royalty payment in question here is for the songwriters. Many songwriters rely entirely on royalties for their income, and because "songwriter" is not the same thing as "performer", the option of going on tour or selling t-shirts isn't open to them.

Okay, a higher royalty means more money skimmed off by the collection agency, but it's only a small skim in this case, and it means more money for the person who actually wrote the song.

To take an example of a different creative endeavour: Why is okay to give Google or Apple 30% every time you buy an app from a developer, but not okay to give the collection agency 1c every time the songwriter gets 10c? (and you didn't even have to pay that 11c!). In both cases, you're paying middlemen, but both are providing the service of collecting and distributing revenue for the creators. (That 30% isn't paying for hosting; most of the costs in running an appstore are in user administration, accounting and payment processing.)

Re: Why shouldn't streaming services pay more?

I know there is a lot of aspects to this story, but the main point of your comment misses the part of the article where other streaming services 'who also happen to have a terrestrial radio station' pay less than Pandora. That was the whole reason for them buying a radio station.